From my understanding Will Smith character is hardly even in the movie, so that would explain why it's not watchable.

I like this quote from a reviewer....
"You know you're in trouble when you find yourself feeling sorry for one of the world's wealthiest teenagers. And you're definitely in trouble when you wish the mess of a movie he stars in could be as entertainingly rotten as 'Battlefield Earth.'"

I will describe After Earth in a word: Boring. The entire movie is basically a loser teenager wandering through a jungle, constantly screwing up since his emotionally distant daddy never shows affection. The kid eventually has a blowing up spat where he cries over what he feels are mistakes, daddy gives fatherly advice, eventually there's a showdown with an alien where the kid finally finds his mojo, kills the alien and now has self confidence or something. Yeah, not really impressed with this.

Really, I was on the fence about seeing this since I generally don't care for M. Night Shyamalan movies but I do enjoy Will Smith movies. Obviously I decided to give it a shot anyway. Whatever, even Will Smith can have a stinker, I guess.

And those future accents really were distracting. Yeah, I get what they were trying to do, giving the film's world its own identity, but it just didn't work for me.

There is no "twist" here, any more than there was in The Last Airbender. People keep forgetting that Shyamalan didn't conceive or write this film -- he was just brought in to direct someone else's project. Sure, he did do a draft of the script, and as the director he had the final say about its content, but one theme I'm seeing in a number of those Rotten Tomatoes reviews is that Shyamalan's direction seems phoned in because he wasn't sufficiently invested in a concept that wasn't his.

So while this is a film directed by Shyamalan, it is not a "Shyamalan film" in the sense of following the formula he's known for.

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So it's *not* boring and nonsensical like all his other films post 'Unbreakable'? Because I'm hearing different here.

For the record: didn't see it, ain't gonna. It's sad because I was a big fan of MNS about ten years ago. I rather enjoyed 'The Village' and somehow overlooked the monumentally insulting stupidity of 'Signs' but now...well let's just say Airbender used up what last lingering dregs of respect I had left for the man as a filmmaker.

Judging from the reviews of this movie, and the general reputation of Battlefield Earth, these movies aren't doing Scientology any favors.

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And this is a witch hunt. It's not like you walk into the film as a Christian or Atheist or Muslim and suddenly walk out of thinking "Maybe I should join Scientology".
Smith is friends with Cruise, and so suddenly a science fiction film has to be Scientology propaganda. That is ridiculous.

Casual students of Scientology may find their ears pricking up at those maxims because fear and its overcoming receive a lot of play in Dianetics, a foundational text by the creator of Scientology, the pulp science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard."

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So I guess Star Trek 2009 is scientology propaganda as well, because it features the Kobayashi Maru which is clearly explained to be a test of facing fear of certain death, and Abrams is friends with Tom Cruise.

Admittedly, I know shit all about Scientology. The most research I've done into the matter was watching the South Park episode about Tom Cruise in the closet. So any references to Scientology or its beliefs went completely over my head.

But in the end, all that is irrelevant. The movie could be a blatant Scientologist's propaganda tool that doesn't pretend to be anything else, but provided it was entertaining I'd find something to enjoy about it. After Earth's problem is that it isn't entertaining. It's boring, there's nothing to enjoy, and it's not a movie I would recommend. That's the relevant issue here.

I just saw After Earth. I thought it was okay. I had seen a lot of negative reviews for it and I don't think the film deserves all the hate. I don't think it's a summer blockbuster film though. They should've released this in April or late summer where the expectations wouldn't be so high and the competition wouldn't be so fierce. Or maybe released it around Father's Day to market it as a holiday film.

I liked the look and feel of the film for the most part. I liked the smart suit, space ships, and the cutlass. The Ursa was okay though it could've been designed to look a little better. I did have some dislikes:

-I didn't like the way Will Smith and his family talked. I guess they were trying to sound futuristic, but I wish they had just used their regular voices.
-Some of the CGI and backgrounds didn't always look good.
-There was no explanation for why everything on Earth had evolved to kill humans. And how would Will Smith know that?
-I wish the animals had been more exotic looking and there had been another challenge or two for Jaden.
-Jaden I'm iffy on. Sometimes he was a bit too whiny, but he is a teenager so what do you expect?
-One of the things that intrigued me about this movie was that they developed a back story hundreds of pages long, a whole history and we don't really see much of that at all in the film. I wish they had went into a little more depth about why humans had left Earth, who dropped those creatures on them, and what happened to those aliens? (I picked up the After Earth prequel and the novelization before the film so hopefully that will answer my questions, because I don't think there's going to be a sequel, though if that had been planned, the film didn't do much to set that up.)

From my understanding Will Smith character is hardly even in the movie, so that would explain why it's not watchable.

I like this quote from a reviewer....
"You know you're in trouble when you find yourself feeling sorry for one of the world's wealthiest teenagers. And you're definitely in trouble when you wish the mess of a movie he stars in could be as entertainingly rotten as 'Battlefield Earth.'"

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Smith is in the movie quite a bit, though he is not in any of the action, except for a brief scene close to the beginning of the film. Jaden does carry a lot of this movie-or drops it depending on how you feel about his performance.

People keep forgetting that Shyamalan didn't conceive or write this film -- he was just brought in to direct someone else's project. Sure, he did do a draft of the script, and as the director he had the final say about its content, but one theme I'm seeing in a number of those Rotten Tomatoes reviews is that Shyamalan's direction seems phoned in because he wasn't sufficiently invested in a concept that wasn't his.

So while this is a film directed by Shyamalan, it is not a "Shyamalan film" in the sense of following the formula he's known for.

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I get so tired of the Hollywood apologists on this board...

Typical Apologist said:

Well, actually, Irving Mogul only farted in the general direction of the studio two years before it was created by a horde of anonymous trained rhesus monkeys with iPads trapped in Funk & Wagnall's basement and shouldn't be blamed for the shitfest it became even though his is the only name on all the production credits, cause the studio just likes to give innocent people credit as a goof.

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Dude, he shares the screenwriter credit, he owns the director credit, he cashed the check, and you would have to dumb and blind not to see the typical nature-worshipping that Night's been shoving down our throats since Signs. It is an M. Night Shyamalan film. The fact that it was conceived by a millionaire nepotist does not change that.

Judging from the reviews of this movie, and the general reputation of Battlefield Earth, these movies aren't doing Scientology any favors.

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And this is a witch hunt. It's not like you walk into the film as a Christian or Atheist or Muslim and suddenly walk out of thinking "Maybe I should join Scientology".
Smith is friends with Cruise, and so suddenly a science fiction film has to be Scientology propaganda. That is ridiculous.

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Okay, maybe "parable" would have been a better word. The Scientology themes/parallels may not be explicit, and might not have been intended, but they certainly seem to be there.

I think this nepotism stuff I'm reading is overblown. I don't see a problem with Will Smith wanting to help his son succeed. A lot of parents do and would do what Will is doing if they could.

And Jaden has done two films-Karate Kid and The Day the Earth Stood Still-without his dad co-starring. It's not like he has been propped up by his dad for his whole (short, and just beginning) career.

Do I think Jaden is the best actor ever? No. There were some parts that annoyed me, but at the same time his character was supposed to be a bit whiny and skittish. He was playing an untested and overwhelmed teen way in over his head. I'm not quite sure how else he was supposed to play that?

I don't think the accents the characters used helped make them anymore endearing to be fair, but those were decisions made way above Jaden's head.